SETI is officially back online, listening to the stars for intelligent, presumably chatty, life.

The project ended a seven month dark period caused when former partner the University of California at Berkley pulled out due to budget cuts. Faced with a world where cries from alien civilizations could fall on deaf ears, the institute decided to ask for public donations.

$230,000 later, we have our ears back to the train tracks.

“This morning, at 6:18, we began re-observing the Kepler worlds,” Jill Tarter, director of the Center for SETI Research at the SETI Institute, said Monday during the Kepler Science Conference here at NASA’s Ames Research Center. “We’re just extremely excited to be back on the air today.”

The focus now as it was before the shut down are alien planet candidates observed from the Kepler telescope.